Luis DeAnda Named President at TBWA/Chiat/Day Los Angeles

Move Comes Amid Infiniti Review and Tapering of Pepsi Work

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Luis DeAnda has been named president of TBWA/Chiat/Day's Los Angeles office, succeeding Carisa Bianchi, who is leaving the shop after 24 years.

Luis DeAnda

Ms. Bianchi had been president of the L.A. office since 2005. She previously held the same title at TBWA's San Francisco office, which shuttered in 2002.

Mr. DeAnda has been with the TBWA network for 12 years, joining TBWA in January as managing director after serving as managing director at TBWA/Media Arts Lab, the unit formed to handle the Apple account. He was previously chief operating officer at TBWA/Hakuhodo in Tokyo.

"His global experience and past success at growing the businesses he has been attached to speak for themselves," Tom Carroll, CEO-president at TBWA Worldwide, said in a statement. "I'm excited to see what we will achieve with Luis at the helm and where he will take the L.A. agency."

The move comes after John Norman, who was chief creative officer of the agency's L.A. office, left to take the same role at Translation in New York. TBWA in L.A. has yet to hire a replacement. For now, three executive creative directors, Fabio Costa, Stephen Butler and Brent Anderson are overseeing creative.

TBWA/Media Arts Lab found itself in headlines last week when an email between Apple CMO Philip Schiller and Media Arts Lab's CEO James Vincent became public because of Apple and Samsung's court dispute over patent violations. According to that exchange, TBWA and Apple hit a rough patch in their relationship early last year.

TBWA declined to comment on the matter, though the agency's relationship with Apple remains intact, even as Apple brings more creative executives in-house to execute campaigns. Apple, as Ad Age reported yesterday, has enlisted four digital agencies.

The move comes a few months after Nissan's Infiniti, which TBWA Los Angeles handles, put its global account into review. TBWA is participating, and the agency still handles work for the Nissan brand.

Though TBWA/Chiat/Day continues to do work for PepsiCo's Gatorade brand, it hasn't done any significant work for trademark Pepsi in months. PepsiCo last year created an Omnicom model for its business dubbed Galaxy that includes TBWA, which handled North American advertising, BBDO, which handled overseas work, and 180LA.

But the brand has looked to other shops, many of them outside the holding company, for high-profile campaigns running around Super Bowl and the Oscars. Pepsi has used shops including Motive, The Barbarian Group, Mekanism, Tracy Locke, Scratch and Bauda Design for those campaigns. Omnicom's 180LA has been tapped to handle global campaigns, including last year's Beyonce push and this year's soccer effort. The last U.S.-based creative campaign TBWA/Chiat/Day handled was Pepsi's fall football campaign, which launched in September.

"We no longer have on a lot of our brands an AOR or lead creative agency," said a PepsiCo spokeswoman. "We're pulling from [a] roster of agencies for different projects, as we look for the right creative ideas." Though TBWA/Chiat/Day remains on PepsiCo's roster, it has no current projects for trademark Pepsi, the spokeswoman added. A TBWA spokeswoman said the agency is no longer handling work for Pepsi brands such as Pepsi, Diet Pepsi and Pepsi Max.

It's unclear what Ms. Bianchi's next move is, though she said in a statement: "A big part of my life's journey has been with TBWA/Chiat/Day. Over the years, I have had the opportunity to work with extremely talented people, develop powerful work on behalf of iconic brands, and develop meaningful client relationships. I have also had the privilege and pleasure to work alongside Lee Clow throughout my career. He has taught me many things that have made me stronger and more creative."